Defense Speak Interpreted: The Impact of Venture Capital-backed Defense Contractor Firms
American Made Advocacy: Don’t Build Our AI Economy on Foreign-sourced Components 
The Right Approach: The End of an Era—DoD Proposes MIL-PRF-31032 Cancellation
Raytheon, an RTX business, was awarded $676 million to continue manufacturing the tube-launched, optically-tracked, wireless-guided TOW® weapon system for the U.S. Army. The two separate awards comprise an annual production contract for $430 million in fiscal year 2023 and an additional $246 million award in 2024.
"Our TOW production line is active, and we can manufacture up to 10,000 missiles annually," said Tom Laliberty, president of Land and Air Defense Systems at Raytheon. "This combat-proven effector is ready to meet current and future anti-tank guided missile requirements for the US Army, Marines Corps, and land forces across the globe."
Raytheon continues to improve TOW's design with modernized fuzing and target detection. These upgrades were recently demonstrated in successful Fly-To-Buy lot acceptance tests of the latest TOW 2B variant of the missile.
The modernized fuzing and target detection updates provide warfighters unparalleled capability, maintaining the fastest target engagement time in the segment. This allows TOW to support and excel during complex urban engagements with varied targets of interest while maintaining superior ATGM capability as primary mission.
Additionally, improvements to the overall missile design and packaging will help meet the latest military environmental requirements to support evolving logistical and terrain challenges. This testing milestone ensures TOW users around the world have the latest and most effective weapon system for their deterrence and defensive needs.
To date, Raytheon has delivered more than 700,000 TOW weapon systems to U.S. and international armed forces. Since 2003, the TOW missile system has been used in combat 11,000 times, and the Department of Defense has provided Ukraine with approximately 13,000 TOW missiles.
TOW is compatible with a variety of manned and unmanned vehicles, including the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, Stryker anti-tank guided missile vehicle, Bradley Fighting Vehicle, and numerous light armored vehicles. Work under these contracts will take place in Tucson, Arizona.
